Synopsis

The Big Short The men who made millions from a global economic meltdown.In 2005, eccentric hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that the United States housing market is extremely unstable, being based on high-risk subprime loans. Anticipating that the market will collapse during Q2 2007, as interest rates would rise from adjustable-rate mortgages, he envisions an opportunity to profit. His plan is to create a credit default swap market, allowing him to bet against market-based mortgage-backed securities. He proposes his idea to several major investment and commercial banks who readily accept. Burry’s huge long-term bet, exceeding $1 billion, entails paying substantial monthly premiums to the banks. This requirement sparks his clients’ vocal unhappiness, believing he is “wasting” capital, and many demand that he reverse and sell, but Burry refuses. He later discovers that the banks collude with a major bond-rating company to maintain ratings on worthless bonds,

allowing them to sell off their losing positions before the true values became known. Under pressure, Burry restricts withdrawals from his fund, angering his investors. Eventually the housing market collapses and his fund’s value increases by 489% with an overall profit of over $2.69 billion.Deutsche Bank salesman Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) is one of the first to understand Burry’s analysis, learning about his actions from one of the bankers who sold Burry an early credit default swap. Vennett uses his quant to verify that Burry’s predictions are likely true and decides to put his own stake in the market, earning a fee on selling the swaps to firms who’ll be profitable when the underlying mortgage bonds fail. A misplaced phone call alerts Front Point hedge fund manager Mark Baum (Steve Carell) to his plans, and he is convinced to buy credit default swaps from Vennett due to his own personal distaste with the banks. Vennett explains that the market collapse is being further perpetuated by the packaging of subprime loans into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) large enough to be considered AAA ratings.